Wide Rule

When I say you shouldn’t put your house on Foursquare, it looks like I wasn’t the only one thinking it.

Please Rob Me from TechCrunch.

I think it’s time to go a little Amy Vanderbilt on Foursquare.

I know that a service has hit the big time the moment that any application that could be construed as social or fun is available on my blackberry.  Having an iPhone or Droid app means your trendy – having a BlackBerry app says you mean business.

Don’t be public if you don’t want company

Romantic dinners are not the time to update your foursquare friends as to your whereabouts. 

I will reiterate this because it is important.

Do not tell your geolocation friends where you and the person possibly sleeping with you are having an evening alone. 

If you need to get your points for a location, just set your foursquare update to be hidden from friends. It isn’t hard.

If you tell people you’re at bar/restaurant, expect your friends to want to join you.  You are saying “hey, I’m here, you can come play with me!”  Friends want to come play with you and if they’re close by, they probably will!

If they don’t want to join you, you might just be a jerk.

Situations to set your status to hidden:

• dates
• job interviews
• family dinners
• drinking alone

Spamming twitter/Facebook is annoying

This is true for everything that has the ability to auto-update your feeds.

I want to hear what you think, not what game you’re playing or song you like.  If I wanted to know these things, I would follow those feeds directly.  I follow you on twitter or Facebook because I’m interested in your thoughts, hopes, dreams and bitching.  If I have to deal with your auto-update, I feel like I’m dating someone where all I get is their answering machine.

I think it’s fun if you post about when you’re a Mayor – that’s part of the game.  It also allows me to make fun of people who are Mayors of their job or home.

Don’t check-in at your place of employment

You have to go to work.  You should be there everyday. Being Mayor of where you work isn’t cool.

Unless you are a prostitute, your home should not be a check-in

Are you really checking in at home every night? Did you really put your address on foursquare as a place where everyone can check-in?

This is a bad idea for a lot of personal reasons.

Geolocation apps are a meet-up tools. Do you want random people meeting up for your family dinner?

This is connected to you. You post about video games, gadgets, life style choices – you have a PS3? Well someone is going to check-in at your house and steal your stuff.

Foursquare is a “where am I patronizing” application – that’s why there is a Mayor and Tip system.  Unless you are selling (or giving away) something out of your house then you do not have patrons.  As much as I’m sure you’d like to see who the Mayor of your house is when you’re out of town, but that’s between you and your wife/husband/dog.

If you are a prostitute, this still might not be a good idea.

The geolocation social networking site Foursquare recently opened their service to “Everywhere.”  This allowed myself and my compatriots in Knoxville, TN to the “where am I” social networking – thus far we’ve only had “what am I doing” available.

The local geekery has already started building locations.  I am a self proclaimed video game hermit, and even I’ve added three separate locations to foursquare.

Today, @tma became the mayor of Pellissippi State Community College.  I pointed out that he shouldn’t be the mayor of where he is employed – I believe that foursquare should be a “I’m a patron here” instead of a “I am here” tool.  I know that @tma is at PSCC because he has to be there.  This led to our first question:

Conundrum 1: Who gets to check in?

Which of these questions are we answering with foursquare:

1. Where am I?
2. Where am I patronizing?

If it is simply number 1, then I think the mayor system is flawed.  To be a mayor in foursquare you have to visit a location more often than other people.  If you are, say, a manager who works at “the bar,” then I certainly hope you are the mayor of the bar.  If there is someone who is at the bar more often than an employee, they may want to question their life goals.

Additionally, I don’t normally want to see the tips from the employees.  I liken this to asking a server how something on the menu is – half the time your server has no idea how it tastes, they’re just going to say that they heard it was great.  There is no bad food if you’re trying to sell it.

If the question not just where am I, but where am I patronizing, it works with both the mayor and the tip system.  The mayor is someone who often visits the establishment, but is not required to visit.  The tips are now from people who actually have tried the food and want you to have (or avoid) a similar experience.

Separating it to just patrons, it will make the mayor a marketing campaign.  Want people to fight for mayor?  Offer a 10% discount to the current mayor.  It’s not a huge difference, but it’s enough to harbor friendly competition between geeks.

(This would all be a moot point if foursquare allowed you to list yourself as an employee.  This would flag you in the tips as employed there and also take you out of the running for mayor).

Conundrum 2: How should large, multi-building locations be displayed in geolocation social networking?

The fact that @tma works at a smaller community college opened another question – how should PSCC be split?  It only has one street address, but if the entire student body is vying for mayor of just PSCC, the competition is won by the guy taking 25 hours of classes a semester.

A few different ways we considered splitting the campus:

• Building
  • This is easily separated. The library, the performing arts center, etc.
• Organization Unit
  • Math Department in two buildings? Should it be one place?
• Campus Region
  • “Where are you?”
  • “I’m in the northwest quadrant of campus!”
  • “What?”
• One Big Campus
  • “I’m the mayor of PSCC!”
  • “That’s because you sleep here.”

I think the biggest problem of separating by anything but building (or even separating at all) is that you have to have a system organized enough that it’s easy to use.  If there is one global PSCC and then other options for the buildings, are you sure that users will click on anything but the first option? How will these different places display in a search?

As always, I have no answers, just a lot of questions

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